WWE SmackDown Smacks and Downs: Bray Wyatt created Braun Strowman

Down: the lack of vision in the men’s tag division

The Miz being sick (and storyline “injured”) forced a quick pivot to a triple threat match for the Tag Team Championship at WrestleMania. John Morrison successfully retained against Kofi Kingston and Jimmy Uso, and The Miz and Morrison spent their time gloating and playing a new “The Dirt Sheet” where they rapped their “hit” song “Hey Hey.”

Once the other two teams interrupted, it was announced that The Miz is cleared so we will have a triple threat match for the titles with the members who didn’t compete last Sunday: The Miz, Big E, and Jey Uso.

Why? If The Miz is cleared, just have the tag triple threat we were supposed to have at WrestleMania (sans ladders)! I understand for storyline continuity (that they booked themselves into) this makes sense, but in the overall canon of professional wrestling, this makes as much sense as Erick Rowan’s pet being an animatronic spider (oh wait…).

It makes even less sense considering there has been a long history in WWE of one member of a championship team being taken out of the match somehow, and the remaining member having to defend the titles in what amounts to a handicap match. They should have just done this at WrestleMania.

I get the feeling this “have one member defend the tag titles against one member of the opposing team(s)” is going to become a crutch WWE uses in the future far too often, kind of like how February suddenly becomes gauntlet match season in WWE.

Further, we were introduced to a new tag team/stable in The Forgotten Sons. As an avid NXT viewer, I really do not like TFS. They’re best known for the Full Sail crowd chanting, “WE FORGOT YOU!” My colleague Chris Jeter “affectionately” calls them The Melatonin Menaces, The Nyquil Knights, or The Benadryl Bandits (hint: they put us to sleep).

Yes, again and I know, rosters are limited, but debuting The Forgotten Sons was just so uninspiring and leads me to believe they will, unfortunately, be forgotten.

The members have military experience (which should be lauded) but didn’t seem to care about their military background until only a few months ago. This isn’t to say they should have always pushed their experience, but the sudden and quick turn from “You won’t forget us” to “We’re REAL veterans” was jarring. Take how they turned to the latter as an example.

They “turned” face because they were mad at NXT UK team Grizzled Young Veterans using the word “Veterans” in their names…even though GYV uses the term in a much different sense than TFS does! GYV is saying that while still young, they’re so talented, so tough, so…grizzled that they’re already on the level of ring veterans.

I’m sorry, but that is NOT a real face turn! That makes them look petty and idiotic, like they have no language comprehension skills. Nothing they did in NXT bettered my opinion of them, but hopefully something clicks on SmackDown and we get more than some brooding White dudes who feel like their privileges are being taken away.

Recently, they’ve begun living the MAGA gimmick including the discrimination and prejudice much of it entails. They’ve pretty much become the aggrieved White men who blame everyone but themselves for their perceived lack of importance. What once was “We will not be forgotten” because of a sense of a lack of opportunity has now become “We’ve become forgotten because of everyone else,” essentially.

Then again, since Vince McMahon is good friends with the Chief MAGAist himself, they’ll probably get a push and win the tag titles come SummerSlam.

Hopefully after next week, we can go back to having actual tag title matches between tag teams. What WWE does with The Forgotten Sons is also something to watch.